Nvidia got the ball rolling in 2019 on having way too many graphics card options in and around the midrange, and now AMD is getting in on that fun with the RX 5500 XT. Let’s take a look at this GPU from AMD!
After many rumours and much debate, the RX 5600 XT has been released. Originally slated to be a GTX 1660 “killer”, AMD re-positioned this card to compete with the RTX 2060.
From the reviews, you can see that it competes well with the 2060, beating it by a tiny margin. The 5600 XT is a $280 card, and the 2060 was a $350 card, so a victory is neat! More than just having high performance and a good price, though—this new card also uses little power, runs cool, and runs quiet. When you check all the main boxes, you have a winner!
But is it all sunshine and rainbows?
For the past few years, Intel has just barely been able to eke out a competitive edge against AMD’s wildly successful Ryzen chips. For straight gaming, Intel’s i7 and i9 chips have been the leader, albeit by a slim margin over AMD’s multitasking powerhouse lineup of CPUs.
Will Intel’s 10th generation, dubbed Comet Lake-S, change all that? Here’s what we know about Intel’s next generation of desktop CPUs.
MSI has a lineup of MAX (yes, allcaps) motherboards. These differ from the non-MAX editions in that they have a more MAXIMIZED bios, and thus can support a wider range of CPUs. Some have a slightly better heatsink.
(Information on Steam’s most consistent top games were gathered for this article from Steam Charts)
Logical Increments has a continuously updated tier list, showing how much it will cost to build a system with a specific performance goal in mind. Ranging from the basic ‘Destitute’ system to the crazy ‘Monstrous’ system, it gives readers an idea of what they can achieve, what their upgrade paths are, and provides easy build lists to ensure a balanced system with high-quality parts.
Using that list, we can cross-reference with the most popular games currently being played on Steam (in terms of consistently high player counts), and fit each game with a Logical Increments tier. In fact, I’ve matched each of the 15 games in this article with 2 LI tiers each: one for 60+ FPS at 1080p, and one for 60+ FPS at 4K.
As I compiled this information, I had two basic criteria that a system had to fulfill to fit into a specific category:
Now, let’s see what kind of PC it takes to run Steam’s top games!
Being the latest in the ever-expanding line of GPUs from NVIDIA, here comes the GTX 1650 Super! The GTX 1650 Super sits in a very specific spot in an already stacked line-up. So, where does it fit into all of this? And what would it look like to build a balanced 1080p gaming system with it?
With the threat of Valkorion finally over, players of the new expansion to Star Wars: The Old Republic, Onslaught, can look forward to the next big bad: their frame rate!
Let’s take a look at building a PC for the current version of the game.
With the new AMD Athlon 3000G, ‘team red’ are hoping to capture that entry-level budget gaming market.
Yet have AMD hit the mark with this, or fallen short? Let’s find out!
The madlads at Valve did it: we actually, truly, really do have a new Half-Life game coming in the form of Half-Life: Alyx!!! Sound the alarms, get the hype train started, IT’S HAPPENING!!!
But first, we need to build a PC to play the thing.
Whether you’re building a new computer or just upgrading your current one, the CPU (central processing unit)—being the ‘brain’ of the computer—is an important component to get right.
But, with all the improvements and advancements in recent years on both the hardware and software sides, how many CPU cores do you need?